Games Night
by LonelyHeart101
Summary: James hated Scrabble. There was something very excluding about a game that so strongly favoured intelligent people who devoured dictionaries for bedtime reading. on temporary hiatus :
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: **Don't own anything

My take on how Lily, James and the gang might have spent their time during their little window of happiness after they graduate Hogwarts

Italics are in present time and the rest is flashbacks to earlier in the evening.

Just a little taster and will be expanded to multi-chap if enough people interested

Happy reading and** please review when done. :)  
**

**Games Night**

_James Potter had never really gotten used to the whole thinking before you talk thing - the way he saw it, thinking kind of got in the way of being impulsive._

_(Of course his darling wife, had she been consulted on this philosophy, might have seen this a little differently - _

_Impulsive people were not ordered people, which bothered Lily Evans-Potter somewhat.)_

_James shivered in the knowledge that at this particular moment in time he was probably quite near the top of the 'List of Things that Bothered Lily Evans-Potter'._

_Also he shivered because the back garden was surprisingly cold for the dead of winter._

_James surveyed the jungle that was his and Lily's garden and wished he had taken up gardening, rather than just discarding it as a waste of time..._

_Gardeners had sheds. James could have slept in a shed._

_As it was their garden was barren, open, and generally not a good place for camping._

_Sadly though, these had not been criteria that James had considered when he and Lily had bought the house._

_Yes, James had reached the point where he was beginning to question a lot of his actions ..._

_namely those actions earlier in the evening which had caused his wife to lock him out of the house_

* * *

"For the last time, I don't want our friends coming here and thinking we live like pigs," Lily sighed explosively and stared witheringly at her husband, who that evening seemed to have taken it upon himself to act as an advert for the laziest man on the entire planet.

And he was grinning like the Cheshire bloody Cat. Although what he was grinning about Lily had no idea.

Said husband tipped her what he supposed to be a seductive wink and, with his next words, cheerfully signed his death warrant:

"You would be the prettiest pig I've ever seen,"

Lily dropped the pile of magazines that had been in her hand and stared at him. In the their glorious three months of marriage so far she had been learning to control her temper, but there were limits. Pig insults were new though, and Lily was fast coming to the conclusion that they were her limit.

James gulped. "We'd make pretty pigs?" ... "I'd make a pretty pig?" ... "I am a pig?"

Lily contemplated the truth in this statement – before deciding that the calm thing to do here would be to keep her mouth shut.

"So you mentioned tidying?" James asked at of a sudden – faux cheerful, unable to stomach her glares any longer.

"I'll just be in the kitchen while you find your happy place."

With that James left his wife fuming in the lounge, happy in the knowledge that due to a little thing called marriage vows she was stuck with him.

Yes, 'Games Night' was definitely going to be a riot.

* * *

_With a small whimper at the wet ground below James lowered himself to lean against the fence, hoping against hope that kicking him out of their house was not Lily's way of attempting to become unstuck to him..._

_"You do realise, right, that for once this is not actually my fault?" A triumphant voice broke into James' reverie._

_James replied peeved and not at all interested in being told the blindingly obvious: "Shut up, Sirius."_

_He bloody hated Games Night._


	2. The Subtle Art of Warfare

**Disclaimer: **I own nothing apart from the slightly crazy plot

Thanks for the response for chapter 1 : )

Providing the inspiration doesn't disappear then this will be a fairly regular update.

This was written on fuel of Budweiser and chocolate cake, and for the consequences I can only apologise... !!

Same deal as last chap with italics as 'flash forwards'.

**Chapter 2: The Subtle Art of Warfare**

Preparing the cheese dip was a big responsibility, she had assured him.

Simply being overjoyed that Lily was now talking to him again he had not questioned her words, but now James was beginning to suspect his wife of exacting her own special brand of revenge.

If you thought (hard) about it, then it did have a twisted kind of logic:

'Your husband shoots his mouth off so stick him in front of a boiling hot stove and make sure he stinks of cheese for the rest of the evening.'

Damn his insanely logical wife.

She was going to be in for a bit of a shock when she found out what his idea of good cheese dip entailed though...

James sniggered to himself as he placed the dusty bottle of port back on its shelf

Can't cook, won't cook?

...More like can't cook, will never be cooking again after this...

..."_Well that explains why I feel drunk," Sirius announced triumphantly..._

"I've got it!" James exclaimed enthusiastically as the doorbell rang. He was feeling mightily starved of male contact –

No, he was feeling mightily starved of _human _contact due to the fact that his wife was acting like the Creature from the Deep at the moment.

He hoped it was Sirius or Remus at the door.

He like Padfoot and Moony –

Padfoot and Moony didn't glare at him or withhold sexual privileges when angry...

James paused at this rather odd statement that had entered his head, leaving his dear darling Creature from the Deep enough time to side step around him and answer the door herself.

This turned out to be a good thing as it turned out that neither Sirius nor Remus was at the door.

No, all those years ago back when he first started Hogwarts James had to have befriended eleven year old boys with no sense of timing.

Lily seemed to have managed fine though because the Longbottoms were at the door.

"Hi!" Lily greeted happily, pulling Alice into a tight hug whilst Frank stood on the threshold looking awkward.

James had issues with Frank.

Obviously he understood completely that in no way did he have a monopoly on marriage and that people other than himself and Lily had the right to undertake the ceremony. He was completely fine with that – really, he was.

It was just that –

Well –...

Frank had usurped his position as a married man.

There, he said it. James Potter was still childish and tended to think of things in terms of playground games and Frank Longbottom was his rival.

Okay, back to reality James. He tried to concentrate.

Lily was furiously inclining her head towards said usurper. Figuring that she was not simply pioneering a new form of interpretive dance and she was actually trying to signal to him, James took the hint and turned to Frank with a shamelessly forced smile.

He's always assumed that from the moment they said 'I do', married couples acquired a kind of telepathy with each other, whereby they were able to become like one person and channel each other's thoughts. This wasn't true and James was now beginning to wonder if he would ever figure out what Lily was thinking.

"Can I take your coat, mate?" he eventually managed to spit out to a grimacing Frank.

Like two men facing off in battle that would decide the entire fate of human kind James reached forward for his mortal enemy's coat, and fought back a giggle when Alice announced that she had brought round Scrabble.

Games Night? This was going to be fun.

"_That's why you don't like Frank?" Sirius questioned, incredulous. "I thought it was because you wished you had married Alice."_

"_Shut up Sirius."_

* * *

By the way, anyone currently following my main multi-chap story 'Getting over You' will see that my teenage Sirius is very different from my adult Sirius. There is a reason for this and accordingly you could take this fic to be part of the same 'universe' as Getting Over You. Anyway, **please read and review!!** I'd love to know what you think of this.


	3. Juvenility

**Disclaimer: **As always, I don't own a thing

**Chapter 3: Juvenility **

"How come I always have to go with Remus?" Sirius whined.

James personally didn't see the great problem with being partnered with Remus 'my brain is the size of a basketball' Lupin, but Sirius seemed to take a perverse kind of delight in being pernickety.

Lily, however, sighed explosively, resenting that her organisational skills were being called into question. She would have liked to be partnered with Remus herself, but the thin band of metal on her left hand rendered this impossible – apparently loyalty and marriage were meant to go hand in hand.

"You like Remus, don't you?" she snapped at Sirius. James always bemoaned the fact that she had never got on with his best friend. His attitude tonight was doing little to rectify the situation.

"Of course I like Remus, but I always feel like you're insinuating we should get married when you pair us together," Sirius replied, matching Lily wide-eyed glare for glare.

James had always considered it a blessing and a curse to have surrounded himself with two of the most stubborn people on the planet. On the one hand it was always wonderfully entertaining to watch them face off, but on the other hand ninety-nine percent of the time they were facing off at him.

Remus looked slightly askance at this suggestion of marriage and looked up from his hot chocolate with a start:

"Marriage?" He shrugged his shoulders faux-nonchalantly. "Well if you're game Padfoot, then so am I," Remus continued lightly, before turning back to his steaming hot drink with a grin.

To James' intense pleasure it seemed that Sirius-baiting had overtaken James-baiting in people's Lists of Enjoyable Things to Do.

"Everyone teases me," Sirius sulked.

"So teams are: me and James, Alice and Frank, Remus and Sirius," Lily clarified, moving to mark the initials on her specially drawn out score card.

"Now, what game are we starting with?" she asked, throwing the question open to the gathering.

"Strip Poker sounds like the best bet to me," Sirius replied with a wicked grin, winking in the direction of Alice.

Frank glared and James smirked.

He knew that Sirius would never dare hit on Lily (mostly because the red head would punch his lights out if he did). On occasion though, James let himself pretend that it was due to his undeniable masculinity, whereas in truth Padfoot could beat him in a wand-less fight any day.

"Scrabble?" Frank piped up hopefully, then promptly letting out as muted yell as James trod on his foot.

"How very juvenile of you, James," commented Remus blithely.

James hated Scrabble. There was something very excluding about a game that so strongly favoured intelligent people who devoured dictionaries for bedtime reading.

"We could go Scissors, Paper, Stone to decide," he tabled, deciding that as the man of the house it was his duty to solve their impending problem. He could see that Games Night was turning into a tepid sea of argument and recrimination due to the group's inability to make quick decisions, but James vowed that he was going to be their saviour.

Super-Potter to the rescue!

"Scissors, Paper, Stone?" Lily snorted. "You have _got_ to be kidding me."

Standing his ground for once, James folded his arms defiantly. "Why not?" he replied. "It's almost like a game in itself."

"Me and Alice put forward Scrabble," Frank jumped in, pointedly moving his feet out of reach of James' clumsiness. Frank didn't read dictionaries in bed but – knowing James' passionate hatred of the game – he sensed an opportunity to exact some protracted revenge for the foot-stamping.

"Me and the missus want Strip Poker," Remus added, delighting in the look of horror that crossed Sirius' features. Remus Lupin did not generally have much opportunity for unabashed fun, so he took his kicks where he could get them.

"We'll go for –" James began.

"-Cluedo," Lily finished, barely looking up from her score card. "It's a Muggle game," she added in response to the _clue_less faces surrounding her.

James would liked to have reported this as a touching indictment to the power of married couples to finish each other's sentences, but as 'Cluedo' was not going to be the end of his sentence, this was rendered impossible.

"I'll play you first Prongs," Sirius announced.

James moved in for a good luck kiss from his wife. She obliged with a quick peck, the sentiment somehow diminished by the sharp: "Oh, for God's sake it's not that big a deal" a few seconds later.

... The pair of them faced off across the kitchen table ...

1 – 2 – 3 – and...

Thwack.

Sirius 'stone' smacked into James' forehead, sending him tumbling to the floor.

"I thought that was how everyone played it," Sirius frowned, wondering why everyone was glaring at him.

"What? 1 – 2 – 3 – and knock your opponent out?!" Lily screamed, leaning over her comatose husband.

"Relax," Sirius continued, oblivious to the pointed looks Remus was giving him that screamed 'stop talking before she kills you'. "I've hit him way harder than that before when we were school – he'll bounce right back ... soon." "You know Lily, you're husband is very durable."

Lily fought back the urge to scream.

"_Prongs? I didn't hit you that hard, you sissy."_

"_James?"_

"_James? Are you alright?"_


End file.
